fry survival in high pH?

[Discus Man]

I have a problem... in my agazizi tank was some sand that raised the pH to 7.6
I removed all of the sand and put in pH of 6.6 water, got my Agazizi used to it via the drip method and put them in. The fish are fine. Here's the problem, the water is slowly climbing back up, today it is back to 7.4 and by tomorrow I expect the old 7.6 again. a few flecks of sand seem to have reappeared in the tank probably from the plants I put back in there.
gh is 0, kh is 1... if I manage to trigger spawning do the fry have a chance or will the pH adversly affect them?

 

[Z Man]

I have only checked the pH in my tanks a few times over the last 5 or 6 years. I do use part RO water and have successfully bred & raised over 20 different Apistogramma species. IMHO the main concern is water hardness and not pH. At least 10 of the species I have had breed for me, were bred in water with a 175ppm TDS. That's a medium hard as mush as I can tell. My pH usually stays between 7 & 7.5 even with the RO water. I have never in 20 years tried to change the pH.

 

[Randall]

pH et al.

Dear Discus Man,

I concur with the big Z Man. I haven't measured pH very much for some years now. From my perspective, it's probably the most overated component of water chemistry. Better to check hardness, both GH and KH, and either TDS or conductivity. As long as your water is soft and the conductivity is low, most soft water species will thrive. There are some exceptions, of course, but this method has worked well for me.

Hope this helps.

Randall Kohn